End User Agreement Terms of Service

Your use of Civitas Media LLC’s Internet websites (the “Site”(s)) or the products or services offered on those Sites (collectively, the “Services”) is subject to these Terms of Use (the “Terms” or “TOS”). By using the Services, you agree to be bound by all of the Terms.

I. ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS

Civitas Media LLC, and its parents and affiliates, and their directors, officers, managers, employees, shareholders, agents and licensors (“Civitas”), provides its User Portals, including its websites, forums, message boards, comment lines, photos, videos, blogs, and information submission portals as services to you, the visitor, based on its Terms outlined here. The latest TOS can always be found at [web address].

We may modify these Terms at any time without notice to you by posting revised Terms on our Sites. Your use of our Sites constitutes your binding acceptance of these Terms, including any modifications that we make. You may not assign your rights or obligations under this Agreement.

Some of the Services may be subject to additional posted conditions. Your use of those Services is subject to those conditions, which are incorporated into these Terms by reference. In the event of an inconsistency between these Terms and any additional posted conditions, the provisions of the additional conditions shall control.

When using the Services provided by Civitas, you are subject to these Terms. Usage of the Services on this Site denotes acceptance of the Terms. The TOS may be changed at any time and without direct notice to individual visitors, so it is recommended that you check back with this page at any time you have questions or concerns.

II. REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS

In order to view messages on this Site without user restrictions, no registration is required or necessary. In order to post messages on and use other advanced services, you must register with Civitas using a valid email address.

Access to some content or archives may require a subscription that is different than the registration for the forums.

III. CONTENT NOTICE

By viewing the Site content, you agree that all content on the Sites and message boards is the responsibility of the person from which the content originated. You agree that neither Civitas nor its sponsors or affiliates are responsible for any content that you personally post or upload. Civitas does not guarantee the truthfulness, quality or accuracy of its content of any third party content. You agree that while using the Civitas Media LLC Site, you may be exposed to content that is offensive or objectionable, and that you will in no way hold Civitas Media LLC nor its sponsors or affiliates liable in any way, shape, or form for any harm or loss that may come to you or others as a result of this content.

IV. ACCOUNT RESPONSIBILITY

Users are solely responsible for protecting their accounts from access by others. You are strongly encouraged to select a hard-to-guess password and not re-use that password on any other sites where it may be read by the owners or administrators of that site.

While it is acceptable for users to maintain multiple accounts, Civitas Media LLC can and may track multiple shared accounts from a single or multiple computers as one account in terms of TOS violations. If the TOS is violated severely enough to warrant the banning of one account, all known accounts shared between a single or multiple users who use the same computer may also be banned for the actions of the violating account at the administrators' discretion.

Because of this rule, it is highly recommended that users not share their accounts with others, nor share their computers used to access the Site with others, as the actions of some other person could easily directly impact all known shared message board accounts.

V. PRIVACY AND RELEASE OF INFORMATION

Under normal circumstances, Civitas Media LLC will not release your provided information to any third party without your consent. However, in certain instances where TOS violations occur (as so determined in Civitas Media LLC’s sole discretion) or potential illegal activities, we reserve the right to forward any and all known information about you and your accounts to your ISP (including libraries, schools, and places of employment), email service provider, your ISP account owner (if someone else is actually paying for it), and any parties whose intellectual property rights have clearly been infringed by your actions or law enforcement authorities.

You certify that you are at least 18 years of age. If you are under the age of 18, please do not submit any content to Civitas. You certify that you have the permission of others who have contributed to or are featured in any of Your Content. If there are any individuals under the age of 18 in any photos, video, or other content that you submit, you must obtain the permission of each such individual's parent or legal guardian prior to submitting the content.

VI. MEMBER CONDUCT

We have the right, but not the obligation, to take any of the following actions in our sole discretion at any time and for any reason without giving you any prior notice:

1) Restrict, suspend, or terminate your access to all or any part of our Services;

2) Change, suspend, or discontinue all or any part of our Services;

3) Refuse, move, or remove any material that you submit to our Sites for any reason;

4) Refuse, move, or remove any content that is available on our Sites;

5) Deactivate or delete your account(s) and all related information and files in your account; and

6) Establish general practices and limits concerning use of our Sites.

You agree that you will not use the Services to perform the following actions:

Offensive Posting

Posts or links to other supplied content of a patently offensive nature are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to:

5) Posting or requesting links to or material from pornographic, obscene, terrorist or hate-speech websites;

6) Posting links to websites with potentially offensive content without a clear warning; and

7) Descriptions or details about any sexual act or sexual organs.

Censor Bypassing

Civitas Sites may be monitored for words that are considered vulgar under any context, and these words are not allowed to be posted. Attempting to bypass the censor by misspelling, inserting spaces or symbols, transposing letters, using look-alike symbols, or any other method is not allowed. The only acceptable method of posting one of these vulgar words is to completely obscure it, making it impossible to determine what the word is without context.

Additionally, certain words are prohibited from being used in topic titles and user information pages; bypassing the censor to post those words where they are restricted is also disallowed. For example, if "gris" is a banned word:

Posts or links to other supplied content clearly insulting other members, individually or as a group, directly or indirectly, are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to: Name-calling ("You're an idiot", "You moron") Direct insults ("Screw you") Offensive orders ("Go kill yourself") Insinuations ("Are you stupid or something?") or insults towards family ("Your mom...").

Trolling (Inciting Flames)

Posts or links to other supplied content intended solely to annoy and/or offend other posters by going against the clear nature of a board or topic are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to:

1) Provoking other users to respond with flames;

2) Provoking fans of a particular team, system or game, especially on boards dedicated to that team, system or game;

3) Making misleading topic titles;

4) Asking obviously useless questions; and

5) Posting false information as fact.

Illegal Activities

Posts or links to other supplied content that violate or incite others to violate the law are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to, asking for or providing, in any way, shape, or form:

5) Posting multiple hard-to-read or nonsensical messages in a single or multiple topics; and

6) Posting large ASCII art (except in social topics specifically calling for it).

Users may be immediately banned (along with any associated accounts) for:

Impersonation

Users may be immediately banned (along with any associated accounts) for impersonating other users by creating and/or using an account with a name clearly intended to impersonate, mock, or antagonize another user, or otherwise falsely claiming to be another message board member.

Harassment/Stalking/Privacy

Continual harassing behavior directed towards a certain individual or group with the intent of creating an intimidating, offensive, or hostile environment on the boards, with or without use of explicit or implicit threats is strictly prohibited. Posting private information without permission is also prohibited.

Unauthorized Access

Accessing or attempting to access any Civitas Media LLC user account not belonging to the user in question without permission is prohibited. Accessing another user's account in this manner is grounds for immediate loss of all known accounts

Bugs and Exploits

Using exploits or tricks in the Civitas Media LLC code to gain privileges, access, or abilities not clearly intended by the Site’s design is prohibited. Making exploits public or using them for personal benefit is grounds for immediate loss of all known accounts.

Usernames, Profiles, and Forms

Violating any of the above rules with a username, any part of the user profile is considered a severe violation.

Other

Any other activity that is detrimental to the flow of conversation and normal activities of the Site and its users may also be deleted.

VII. CONTENT OF OUR SITES

Our Sites and the Services include a combination of content that we create, that our partners create, and that our users create. All materials published by Civitas Media LLC on our Sites, including, but not limited to written content, photographs, graphics, images, illustrations, marks, logos, sound or video clips, and Flash animation, are protected by our copyrights or trademarks or those of our partners. You may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, or in any way exploit any of the materials or content on our Sites in whole or in part, and must follow all additional notices or restrictions contained in the Services. If you would like to request permission to use any of the content on our Sites, please contact the local publisher.

You are solely responsible for all materials, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, that you upload, post, e-mail, transmit, or otherwise make available on our Sites (“Your Content”). Should you discover that Your Content violates the Terms, you will immediately remove Your Content. You represent and warrant that you own all intellectual property rights in Your Content and that Your Content does not infringe or violate the copyrights, trademarks or other intellectual property rights of any person. You hereby grant us, our affiliates, and our partners a worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free, nonexclusive, sublicensable license to use, reproduce, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, transfer, transmit, distribute, and publish Your Content and subsequent versions of Your Content for promotional and marketing purposes and for the purposes of (i) displaying Your Content on our Sites, (ii) distributing Your Content either electronically or via other media to users seeking to download or otherwise acquire it, and/or (iii) storing Your Content in a remote database accessible by end users, for a charge. This license shall apply to the distribution and the storage of Your Content in any form, medium, or technology now known or later developed, including print publication.

You agree to indemnify Civitas Media LLC and its parents and affiliates, and their directors, officers, managers, employees, shareholders, agents and licensors from and against all losses, expenses, damages and costs, including reasonable attorney’s fees, resulting from any claim brought by any third party relating to Your Content or your breach of these TOS.

Our Site contains content that we create as well as content provided by third parties. We do not guarantee the accuracy, the integrity, or the quality of the content on our Sites, and you may not rely on any of this content. Without limitation, we are not responsible for postings by users or third parties.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") provides certain remedies for copyright owners regarding use of their material on the Internet. If you believe that the Content on this Site infringes your copyright, you may send to Civitas at info at Civitaspublications.com notice requesting that the material be removed or access to it blocked from this Site.

In accordance with the DMCA, your notice should include:

(a) an electronic or physical signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the allegedly infringed work;
(b) identification and description of the allegedly infringed copyrighted work(s);
(c) identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing that is sufficient to allow Company to locate the material on this Site;
(d) the name, address, telephone number and e-mail address (if available) of the complaining party;
(e) a statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law; and
(f) a statement made under penalty of perjury that the information in the notification is accurate, and that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

You may be exposed to content that you find offensive, indecent or objectionable or that is inaccurate, and you bear all risks associated with using that content. We have the right, but not the obligation, to remove any content that may, in our sole discretion, violate these Terms or that is otherwise objectionable.

VIII. AVAILABILITY OF SERVICES

The Services are provided “as is.” We do not warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted or without error. Users may encounter delays, omissions, interruptions and inaccuracies in the content or other materials available through the Services. We reserve the right to correct any errors or omissions in the Services.

We disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including without limitation, those of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, with respect to the Services or any information or goods that are available or advertised through the Services. We do not guarantee or warrant that the Services or materials that are downloaded from the Services are free and clear of viruses, worms, Trojan Horses or other destructive materials to the Services. We are not liable for any damages or harm resulting from such materials. If you chose to download materials from the Services, you do so solely at your own risk.

Civitas Media LLC, and its parents and affiliates, and their directors, officers, managers, employees, shareholders, agents and licensors are not liable for incidental, indirect, consequential, special, punitive or exemplary damages of any kind, including lost revenues, profits or lost data, in any way related to the Services or for any claim, loss or injury based on errors, omissions, interruptions of the Services. The sole and exclusive remedy for any claim against Civitas Media LLC shall be limited to the amount you paid, if any, for use of the Services.

IX. THIRD PARTY SITES, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Our Sites contain links to other Internet sites including sites owned by third parties. Your use of each of those sites is subject to the conditions, if any, that each of those sites has posted. We have no control over sites that are not ours, and we are not responsible for any changes to or content on them. Our inclusion on our Sites of any third-party content or a link to a third-party site is not an endorsement of that content or third-party site. We are not responsible for any third-party products or services that may be linked to the Services or advertised by third-parties on the Services.

With the exception of products clearly noted as belonging to Civitas Media LLC, we do not sell, resell, or license any of the products or the services that we review, list, or advertise on our Sites, and we disclaim any responsibility for or liability related to them. Your correspondence or related activities with third parties, including payment transactions and goods-delivery transactions, are solely between you and that third party. You agree that we will not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage of any sort incurred as the result of any of your transactions with third parties. Any questions, complaints, or claims related to any product or service should be directed to the appropriate vendor.

X. FEE-BASED SERVICES

Some of the Services require you to pay a fee, as described in the specific conditions included where those Services are offered. You agree to pay all fees and charges that you incur. Unless otherwise noted, all currency references are in U.S. dollars. We may, upon notice if required by applicable laws, at any time change the amount of, or basis for determining, any fee or charge, or institute new fees or charges. All fees and charges are payable in accordance with payment terms in effect at the time the fee or the charge becomes payable.

XI. PRIVACY POLICY

All of the information that we collect from you, such as registration and credit card information, is subject to our privacy policy, the terms of which are incorporated herein. Read our privacy policy.

XII. GOVERNING LAW

This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the United States and the State of Connecticut. The courts in and around Stamford, Connecticut shall have exclusive jurisdiction and venue concerning any disputes related to these TOS.